Visitors flock to Four Arts in Palm Beach on final days of Churchill exhibit

A large crowd listens as Lee Pollock guides them through a tour of and exhibit called A Man For All Seasons: The Art of Winston Churchill at The Society of the Four Arts on Jan. 13, 2018. The exhibit ends Jan. 14. Damon Higgins / Daily News

Mitchell Drimmer peered into the glass case and adjusted his black-rimmed reading glasses.

There, in front of him, was a sculpture of one of his idols: Winston Churchill.

“I’ve read everything Churchill has ever written,” said Drimmer, who drove from his home in Miami to Palm Beach on Saturday morning for his 64th birthday.

The exhibit, titled “A Man for All Seasons: The Art of Winston Churchill” — a four-room gallery of paintings, photographs, books and sculptures of and by the former British prime minister — has been one of The Society of the Four Arts’ most popular exhibitions, according to spokesperson Amanda Jorgensen. As of last week, Jorgensen said, about 9,000 people had visited the exhibit since it opened on Dec. 2.

On Saturday, about 50 people crowded the entrance even before the gallery opened at 10 a.m.

“Churchill is very interesting now,” said Lee Pollock, a trustee of the International Churchill Society and the guide for the exhibit’s final tour on Saturday. “If you want to understand his life, this gives you an insight into his character.”

At the entrance to the exhibit, visitors were greeted with a 1943 portrait of Churchill wearing a suit and bowtie, his hand resting on a book, his brows furrowed and his eyes staring straight ahead. It is titled “Blood, Sweat and Tears” — Drimmer’s favorite.

“Churchill was an accomplished man. He was unabashed, unashamed,” Drimmer said. “And to be close to these works of art is to be as close to the man as can be.”

Other items on display include Churchill’s signed, first-edition books, articles of clothing (including a silver top hat signed by Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin in 1945), a mold of Churchill’s right hand and several of his typewritten speeches.

Daily News Arts Editor

This top hat signed by Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Yalta Conference is included in A Man for All Seasons: The Art of Winston Churchill. National Churchill Museum, Fulton, Mo.

Most of Churchill’s paintings on display were of fruit, flowers, boats, sunsets and nature. But mostly nature.

“He was an outdoor person,” said Pollock, adding that Churchill played polo until he was 52. “He was a very vigorous person.”

After the tour ended and after the applause died down, Pollock asked if there were any questions. There were many.

“Why is there a pug in that photograph of Churchill?”

“What happened to Churchill’s wife, Clementine, after he died?”

“Did he have any siblings?

Pollock answered each. But the most common question he gets, Pollock said, is when someone wants to know whether or not Churchill really said a particular quote.

“If you have a quote that sounds good, and you don’t know who said it,” Pollock said, “it’s probably a good idea to go with either Abraham Lincoln, Yogi Berra or Churchill.”